VRL Season 5 - The Next Generation of Racers

DLC Content

Pilots participating in VRL Season 5 will be required to purchase the X-Class DLC as well as weekly Maps from Velocidrone. The DLC revenue will go directly towards funding the league and improving the overall experience of this season and future ones.

Tracks

Tracks will now be released on Sunday morning each week, giving pilots and extra day to leaderboard smash. As a league, we will do our best to make FPS friendly maps that do not handicap pilots with less-capable computers.

Season Spec

Spec racing in VRL has become a huge hit! The racing has tightened up and the finishes have been even more exciting! Setting a spec will allow us to control the max speed of each pilot’s drone to ensure that everyone is on a level playing field.

Pilots may choose a frame of their choice

Any Props

Profile 1

Single Class

Auto Arming (no turtle mode)

Teams

7 teams of 6 pilots

Pro Class Teams - These are the best pilots in sim racing from around the World who will represent their sponsors in VRL

The league will be open to a maximum of 7 sponsored teams. League registration fee is $500 for sponsored teams.

Registered teams will cover pilot entry fee and also pay a league fee for the season

Advanced Class Teams - Each Pro team will draft an advanced team filled with 6 pilots, who will be made available in the VRL draft based on their performance on the “Tryouts Track”.

Advanced pilots will act as the “minor league” team for the Pro teams

They will be allowed to sub in on a weekly basis for the Pro teams if needed

Advanced teams will be made up of 4-6 pilots

These teams will compete on Friday nights at 6PM PST on the same track as the Pro teams.

Advanced teams’ performance will not affect the Pro Team’s seasonal point standings

Season 5 Draft Tryouts - Pilots who do not get added to a sponsored team will have the opportunity to be drafted by the Pro Teams and will then race in a separate Advanced league.

The VRL Season 5 Tryout Window will be open from September 11th -September 20th

The tryout track is now official and is called “VRL SEASON 5 TRYOUTS” on Dynamic Weather. (If you do not see the track on your list of available tracks, close the sim and re-open it)

Pilots will have 10 days to try and set their best 3-lap single class time for the track (THIS IS NOT SINGLE CLASS SET TO 3 LAPS!! 3-LAP SINGLE CLASS IS AN ACTUAL OPTION!)

All pilots who successfully set a time on the leaderboard will be draft eligible

The Draft will take place on the evening of September 21st and be live-streamed on Twitch

The Pro Team Captains will be required to attend the draft and will be asked to be on camera and coms

Captains

Each team will be required to nominate a captain who will be asked to join a video conference each week to open up the live stream. Each captain will be interviewed by the race moderator

Captains will also be responsible for ensuring their pilots are ready to go at the start of each weekly event

Format

The racing format will be very similar to last season with some adjustments made to the scoring system. Using the successes and failures of Season 4 as a guide, we think we’ve come up with a good scoring system that will keep teams engaged throughout the season

Leaderboard Smash

As many VRL veterans will tell you, this was perhaps the most intense aspect of being a VRL pilot. Your team will rely on you to grind a new track each week, pushing your limits of skill to the max. Last season we saw weekly leaderboard smashes with teams separated by 1 second or less!

All 6 pilots will be asked to set a 3-lap single class time for each week’s track (new tracks will be released on Sunday morning and pilots will have until the next Friday at midnight EST time to set their record (We’ve moved the closing time to Eastern time zone to make it more fair for our midwest and east coast pilots)

If any of your team’s pilots do not set a 3-lap time, we will set their time to 10 seconds slower than the slowest time of the week

The total time for your team will rank you amongst the other 6 VRL teams

6 pilots flying 3 laps for a total of 18 laps

Race Event

This is what every pilots signs up for VRL to be a part of! The racing is some of the most intense and pressure-filled heats you will ever experience as a pilot. All 7 teams will be asked to produce 4 pilots per week to compete live.

X-Class Heats (6:45PM-7:15PM)

Each week, VRL will produce a special X class track in the same location as the 5-inch racing. This track will not be included in the leaderboard smash, but will be used for live racing only.

Teams will select 1 pilot to represent them in the X Class heats

This will be heats of 7 pilots in the air racing for finishing position

5 heats of back-to-back racing

The Big Heats (7:15PM-8:30PM)

The Pro pilots will be seeded based on their leaderboard standings and race against the other teams’ evenly ranked pilots

In the image below, for example, Drobot Racer (IOP) would be matched up against Orangestuff (Team Punchout) and JFURN (ESC) along with the other 4 teams’ top ranked pilots from that weeks leader board smash.

There will be 7 Big Heats with 7 pilots, each representing their teams

Each Big Heat will consist of 5 heats with points being awarded for finishing position

Each pilots total points will go towards their team’s total points for the event as they vie for the top two spots to race in the weekly relay championship

Below you can see an example from last season where Raging Canadian gave ESC on Fire the edge over IOP.

In the next heat, SFPV gave his team the edge over ESC on Fire

The totals will be added up after all the pilots have completed their Big Heats, as seen below

Weekly Finals (8:30PM - 9:00PM)

Teams will pick their top 3 pilots to compete in 8-lap per pilot relay

First team to 24 laps will claim the top spot for the event

Tracks will include a recharge gate to facilitate the relay format, but the gate will be in a position that does not promote using it during the round robin racing.